Paul Watson’s notes on ongoing artwork, giving an insight into the creative process.
When I come to the end of a year it never feels like I’ve got anywhere as much work done as I wanted to. This year has been much the same. I know the year has been dominated by politics, particularly the rise of the far-right in the UK, Europe, and the US, supported by Useful Idiots (by…
I’ve now finished the first 5 of my England’s Dark Dreaming series of drawings. I wish I could show you them at their full size—one metre high—rather than the relatively small digital photographs of them, because the physical scale of a piece of artwork affects your reaction to it. Having…
I'm increasingly convinced that the country is temporally fractured, and we should be expecting a visit from Sapphire & Steel any time now. Everything seems to operate on skewed oneiric logic. Everyone is reduced to ill-disguised cyphers, woodenly acting roles and reciting lines. The series of…
A few days ago on Twitter I was thinking out loud about the film The Witch, which I watched on Saturday evening, specifically about its relationship to the theme of Folk Horror which is getting some interesting attention recently. Folk Horror seems to be a nebulous concept to define, even though…
Selling artwork is always difficult, especially in the UK for some reason. People are reluctant to buy artwork - maybe they think it’s expensive or that you need to be an expert in the “art world” before buying art? Neither of these are true, but these attitudes seem prevalent. I could…
Over on Twitter yesterday I posted a series of tweets that, merged together, went something like this: What I need is Brighton people who will dress up in masks like those in the photo [above] and these, and be filmed doing some sort of dark folk-horror dance/performance art/ritual. Performers…
Last week I put up a Twitter poll to gauge the reaction to an idea I had. The question was “Would being able to pay for a piece of my artwork in smaller monthly instalments make you more likely to buy one?” Would being able to pay for a piece of my artwork in smaller monthly instalments…
As I’ve been developing a body of artwork about myth and masked mythic characters over the past few years my thought process has frequently been drawn to the concept of ritual. Not everyday rituals like shaking someone’s hand as a greeting, but those rituals probably better described as…
I have a confession to make: I don’t particularly like some of the new nature writing. Some of the old stuff bores me too. I should probably clarify that a bit: I don’t want to read piles of books describing authors’ walks through the landscape, each book interspersed with worthy monologues…
I’m just back from a 2-day holiday in Berlin, a city where the ghosts lie close to the surface, cross-hatching the modern city. On Friday I walked for hours following the ghostline of the Berlin Wall, a strange and sombre journey taking in the Holocaust Memorial, the Brandenburg Gate, the…
Read the rest of “Berlin: Degenerate Art and Käthe Kollwitz”…